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this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Antiwork
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Date Created: June 21, 2023
This community supports labor, with an aspiration for it to cease to be required to live our lives. Members of this community want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and/or want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.
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Start here! Some of the more talked-about essays on the topic.
- The Abolition of Work by Bob Black (1985) | listen
- On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (2013) | listen
- In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) | listen
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I'm self employed. I enjoy my work. It's very rewarding, but every time i get a little extra money sometime comes along and takes it.
I have no retirement savings. My retirement plan is to kill myself when I'm too sick to work. I've made sure my life insurance is written so that it will pay out to my wife even if I off myself.
I come from a long line of men who don't die easy. I watched my grandfather refuse food or water after being diagnosed with stage 4 bone cancer and still live for two weeks. That was after ten years of enduring strike recovery. My dad coughed up a lung from congestive heart failure for over two years before finally wasting away, looking like a pregnant Holocaust survivor. Same for several other uncles and great-uncles. I figure I've got another 25 years before I'm a liability. I'm already physically miserable. Middle age sucks. Old age sucks even harder and I'm not even there yet.
I'm gonna follow one of my great-uncles examples and go for a walk in the woods. I'll make sure whatever SARs volunteer that draws the short straw isn't too traumatized when they find me. Just another old man that chose his own time
ETA: to be clear, i don't wish to die (any more than normal lol). But I am pragmatic about the reality of old age and my likely path. Will I feel the same in 25-35 years? Maybe not. We'll see what happens. Perhaps our fortunes will change for the better, perhaps we will be able to immigrate to a nation that has better social safety nets, perhaps we die in a meteor strike in 2039
It's very difficult to be self employed because the big boys have every market covered and can take a loss here or there to corner a new one. Meanwhile, you have to pay your bills on whatever you earn. There are benefits to being employed--at the right place.
Also self employed. My situation is a bit better than yours (99% luck, I know how I got my contracts) and I'll probably be able to retire, maybe even a little early if I can keep up my skills until retirement.
However, my plan when the money starts running out or the back pain makes it too hard to get out of bed every day is the same as yours. I don't plan on getting married. I'm not leaving anyone behind. I'm not going into a bang 'em and bin 'em joint. My back has been degrading since I got rear ended in my 20s. I have a couple of acres in the middle of nowhere that's entirely wooded where no one goes (I guess, I only check on the place twice a year....taxes are almost nothing because no one wants to live anywhere near it). I'm going out there and just becoming one with nature.
This is why I stopped working for myself (not the best business partner, long story I won't get into here).
I hope that you find a better way and that you don't have to resort to that. Suicide will hurt your wife, I have a friend who had her husband shoot himself in the head with a shotgun a few years ago. She's 74, and while she has her kids and grandkids visit sometimes, she misses him terribly 3 years later. They were married for around 50 years.
Please, choose a different way.
Only selfish people ask someone else to suffer longer because they'll be a little sad without them.
Books are where it's at!
If you've read the post, he has a decent line of illness that will make him incapable of taking care of loved ones, so to ease their burden he will cause sadness instead. Which one is better depends on who you ask. I hate feeling like a burden and I'm sure most people do, but sometimes it's necessary to stick around, but that is far from always the case.
I did read the post, and made the emotional appeal to him, based on those nuances. The shallow troll turned it into a digital and binary measurement, rather than the analogue existence we currently enjoy. They just didn't like that I pointed out how dark their opinion was.
I appreciate the sentiment in point two. I feel similar when others speak of suicide. In this case I think of this more as death with dignity for the terminally ill. And it's years away, so don't lose sleep over me.
Also, i don't get the pushback you've received for wishing someone will continue to live. It's a weird hill to die on (heh, puns)
Anyway, thanks for the kindness and have a good life
I believe the pushback is the result of simple ignorance on their part and refusing to see nuance. I returned their bellicose nature and the minions hopped on the bandwagon.
Life and death isn't so cut and dry, unlike their currently shallow and negative perceptions. I pray that your long term health improves, and that your business prospers so you don't have to choose that direction.
In the meantime, live well under the sun.